Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [39]
Max the Great Swordsman, the hero of many a legend, would’ve been elated to hear those words from his father, as would simple Max Piper, the fourteen-year-old boy. But they were both absent just now. It was Max the Beast of the Woods who heard and cared not at all. He waited for a few seconds, listening to the faint sounds of his father walking off into the forest. Then he followed, stooping down once before he left the circle of firelight to pick up the biggest stone he could carry in one hand.
He stalked through the night, and being who he now was, he made little sound and stumbled not at all. He crept deftly and silently around tree and root, and ducked under intervening branches. Max found his father with his back to him, splashing his night water against the base of a tree. Max approached and his father turned, alerted by a small sound, or maybe just the presence of another creature so close to him.
“You should be back with the others, son. You’re still on guard until I’m done.”
Max raised the stone and struck down hard on his father’s skull.
Father wobbled in place, looking at Max with an odd expression, which wasn’t only due to the now distorted shape of his head — sunken and indistinct on one side. Yes, there was confusion in his expression, and maybe some pain as well — it was hard to tell for certain in the dark. But mostly Max thought he saw a look of deep regret in his father’s eyes.
“Max?” Father said.
His hands lost their ability to grip the trousers he’d unlaced to make his water, so the trousers collapsed down around his ankles. The sword he’d never even tried to unsheathe clattered loudly against some unseen rock or root on the ground.
The stone in Max’s hand was wet now.
He struck again, and his father fell like a dropped bag of onions.
Something warm had splashed Max’s face. His father, lying crumpled at his feet reached out weakly with one trembling hand, trying to touch Max, but then it fell unmoving by his side. Max knelt next to his father and hit him again and again with the slippery stone. He continued doing it for a long time, and when he’d finished, and stood up again, his father was no longer there. No discernible man at all existed in the grim pile of ruined meat and spilled wetness at his feet.
Max dropped the stone and drew Frost Taker from its sheath, intending to plunge it a few times into the mess below. But then he thought, no, I’ll wait to let Frost Taker drink for the first time from the child thief who stole my inheritance. So he turned, with the blade still in his hand, and walked back towards the firelight, which was partially obscured by the trees of the great and terrible Black Forest — his home.
In which three can
quickly be reduced to two,
and two can be reduced
to one all alone.
PETER SLEPT, AND AS HE DID HE DREAMED. He dreamed of the woods at first, and all of the scary things which lurked within them. The forest noises, which never stopped through the night, fed into his dream, conjuring up all manner of fearsome creatures to beset him. But later in the night he dreamed that Max had spoken to him — he couldn’t be sure where, because one moment they were in the Peeps’ great hall, and the next moment they were riding on top of their own lost caravan wagon, swaying hypnotically with the contours of the road, as dear old Bonny Lumpen pulled them along.
“Peter?” Max said in the dream. “I’m sorry I hit you and I don’t want to be mad at you any longer, even though you got my flute. You’re my little brother and I love you. I’ll never let anyone else harm you and I’ll always look out for you, from now on.”
Then Peter handed the flute over to Max and said, “No, I’m not going to keep Frost. It’s yours by birthright. It was just a mistake and I talked to Father and he said I could give it to you now.”
The two brothers embraced and were friends again. They talked about innocent boyhood things from that point on, about swimming holes and big green frogs and good sticks for swords, but the exact details of their conversation were a little hard